skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's an ok potboiler that relies ever-more improbable plot devices.

It's also impossibly incorrect politically -- so transparently so that I think it's essentially harmless. But if you don't understand why some people would feel that why you really should watch your step.
I don't know what you mean. HFTs don't do what's good for mankind - they do what's good for themselves. Just like everyone else. No one does what's good for mankind - they do what's best for themselves.

We allow those who don't harm others to continue doing what benefits them - until such a time as it is shown to be harmful - then we stop it. HFTs have not been shown to be harmful.
I think a gap year, even if you don't travel is a good idea. I'd just started freelancing in my final year of high school so I deferred a place at university to see what I could make of freelancing. After the year I decided university wasn't for me (something I'd thought for years but as it was the natural path people take I was going to do it anyway) and that I would be better continuing freelancing and building a business. Three years on and it's been one of the best decisions of my life.

Taking a year out gives you a good opportunity to evaluate the pros/cons of further education. The last year or two of high school are spent being told how important further education is, taking exams, and applying to universities. Evaluating what would happen if you did something else never really enters the thought process for most people. A gap year gives you time to consider your options.
I updated tarbackup.com, what do you think?
I don't like the way we have to basically hand over our twitter accounts. Those are some nasty T&C's
I am speechless in amazement. So badass!!
To Dwight's (I've met him a few times, too. He actually seems like a clever guy) credit, it sounds like he said Dijkstra ;) Just goes to show how little the producers of the show care about the "techy stuff".
Specifically try to judge whether an "early exit" leads to simpler, more maintainable code in this particular case. Optimize for lower cost, not for just following a rule.
How does the exchange charge for access? Per trade, per bandwidth, per colo distance?

It would be simple for the exchanges to reign in trading by adjusting their pricing model. Make it more expensive to make each type of request. Adding a few cents to the request would squash HFT while not drastically effecting other trading systems/people.
Would this apply to Zimride, Riderbee, Ridejoy, etc. ?
The economic optimum is for creators to make the fixed costs of producing the work and nothing else

I don't think economics works the way you think it does. You just removed not only the incentive to make a better (but more expensive to produce) work but also the financial incentive to create any work at all.

Why is this a problem?

Why is it a problem to replace a system that supports the creation of original, innovative works with a system that pushes heavily toward creating endless derivative works and minor variations of the same tired ideas? Are you really asking that question seriously?

I think, contrary to your suggestion, that plenty of people are already fed up with the same old movie sequels and annual releases by the same computer game franchises and so on. But that's what happens when the system doesn't effectively support those who would create more interesting alternatives, which typically aren't as profitable on a first outing but cost more to produce. Coming soon: Cloned Sports Franchise 2013 edition, with ads shown every five minutes during your favourite fly-on-the-wall reality TV show.
Agreed. I wish ITA had the Google Flights speed and interface for browsing multiple cities and dates but still allowed the advanced routing rules. Unfortunately, I doubt people like us doing MRs are their target audience.
That wouldn't have been a malaprop. A malaprop is a misused word that sounds like the correct word.
And we're back up lol, I guess I just happened to catch them while they were doing updates
Bear in mind the exchanges aren't stupid, Nasdaq at least has instituted a penalty system for sending a bajillion orders and not actually trading [0]. One may certainly quibble with the exact rates and penalties but this is a thing that exists.

[0] http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/TraderNews.aspx?id=ETA2012-13
Agreed, I spent 10 seconds trying to figure out how to turn the page. At a minimum there should be arrow buttons that trigger the fancy page flip animation.
Unless reaching orbit with 8 engines was in the plan, I don't think your use of the term matches SpaceX's.
I was writing software professionally in high school. Second year undergrad seems a little late in life to be learning this stuff, if it is critically important.
60k players? That's awesome, congrats.
This is a really cool idea and I'm glad someone's doing it. Have you considered talking to Amazon about it? It's definitely in their best interest for products to be easily identifiable, and they're already doing work on it in a different way with Price Check[1].

Unfortunately there are other companies with a strong incentive to make identifying specific products as difficult as possible[2]. And clothing companies have never been good about sticking with a specific product anyway. I got a Ralph Lauren suit last year that I liked enough to consider ordering another one, but they had already stopped making that style. Maybe dresses or something I could understand, but men's suits?

If you can't buy a product even if you can identify it, then what's the point? Do you have any thoughts on how to get around this problem? One idea that comes to mind is that you could use your data to build a ranking of how long clothing companies (or any companies) stick with their products. I'd certainly find it useful.

Best of luck!

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.amazon.pri...

[2] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020462420457717...
Coding challenge: a sliding window map
>One assumes he's the one shouting "Negative cycles? Bellmans algorithm or Dyson's?!"

I'm assuming he's talking about shortest-path algorithms here (and actually referring to the Ford-Bellman algorithm)— anyone have info about the Dyson algorithm he's referring to?

Never heard of it and googling wields nothing.
I can agree with side.cr, and lyft.. That they are simply a platform by which drivers, and those wanting to be driven are able to reach other. However... Even though payment is voluntary the drivers are participating in a transportation service, and are subject to being regulated as one; non-profit or not.

Not a perfect example of this but similar is that craigslist might be a communication tool for those dealing in prostitution, but they are not the ones committing the crime.
Yeah, but they are getting free marketing on here, it's not exactly a bootstrapped startup.
No, it is not incorrect. The impact of HFT on buy & hold investors is probably a wash. Automated trading has cut the bid/ask spread but may contribute to volatility (it is tougher to say than it seems).

Either way, Mary and Joe were never competing with market makers and active trading strategies, and still aren't now.
I don't think you guys have much reading comprehension: "Hope to instill" does not equal "Behavioral edict"

These are the things, I as a parent, of MY children HOPE to instill in them,

I am not trying to force them in any direction - but I'll be damned sure to have more than a hands-off approach.

Too many kids have horrible lack of parenting.
This series of posts has been really interesting. At first I was dismissive and found myself disagreeing with a lot of the assessments but the explanations of why one language's approach is better from a beginner's perspective can tell us much about better ways to teach programming.
Yeah. I might have gone with "Number 2: Have a plan B in case the day you launch something very significant happens in the tech world to drown out any chance you have of getting attention"
Well if you're going to have negatively weighted vertices, Dijkstra's algorithm is out of the picture from the start :)
this. who do I call when I have issue with Google overcharges or whatever? last time we had these issue we were told, quote "we (google) are an internet company and as such we don't have customer service".
non-print version: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/steven-pearlstein-why...
They're obviously going to need to come up with much more money, but the fact that they have now purchased the land is a monster step.

Really psyched to see how this plays out. Especially since I grew up on the East End of LI and still live relatively close by.
thanks for the comment mate!

yeah - we currently actually work with a heap of retailers and we do match to where you buy them - we've around 90 or so at the moment (love to get your thoughts on http://about.crowdsend.com).

publishers can do a bunch of stuff too - but we think the bigger problem rests with the community than with publishers.

basically once a product's been identified then we match it to a bunch of retailers if we can find it!
I read your book online years ago, and it hasn't left my head yet. The seeds of an eventual goal have been planted!
It's a good list of skills. I don't find them all so linear, I'm sure most of us have bits and pieces from all of the squares, even though it says explicitly that you have to know all of the proceeding skills in order to move to the next column.

I can't help thinking when I read these lists, though, that they probably favor the author's particular skill-set and experience. Maybe not necessarily the author's current state, but perhaps where they'd like to go or what skills they aspire to have.
A similar issue is the preponderance of hyper-image-oriented mobile app designs at the expense of content and usability. Examples that come to mind for me are Urbanspoon, Flipboard (perhaps a controversial view), the new Chef's Feed app—if I can't figure out how to navigate because I'm blitzed by so many photos, something's wrong.
If I were the rental car lobby, I would be putting pressure on regulators to make things as hard as possible for these companies. They are startups, so it's hard for them to put up much of a fight.

It would be very different if Google was behind ride sharing. It took someone the size of Apple to work with the music industry to sell mainstream music legally to the masses.
French Entrepreneurs Revolt
>Not ethically, no -- not possible. Prospective double-blind studies are virtually unheard of in psychology because of ethical issues.

Why do you believe this to be the only valid form of scientific study? Do you hold all disciplines to this standard?

>Yes, true, which is why, in a scientific sense, we don't know anything about these topics.

We know that certain assessments reliably indicate the presence of depression. We know certain conditions reliably induce depression. We know certain therapies reliably relieve depression. We know certain risk factors lead to greater likelihood of depression.

>For example, it has recently been determined by way of a meta-analysis that the many antidepressant studies, taken as a whole, contradict each other, and the conclusion is that antidepressants don't work.

>In layman's language, "there is no scientific evidence to support the conclusion that antidepressants actually do anything."

Can you explain to me how science can decide one way or another on matters concerning depression if such things are inscrutable to the scientific method?
All of the above, actually.

The exchanges have a per-trade charge, and for the data, they charge fees on a per data stream basis, and charge for colocation.

And they already do make each tier more expensive than the previous.
If you're so worried about it, just don't invest in markets that allow it. The "public" is only capable of risking their own money.
The Premium Branch Manifesto
It may not be following the optimal path, but it is absolutely within the planned contingencies: "Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine out situation and still complete its mission."
Yes, he said Dijkstra. He's a FoaF, the mutual friend is a coworker of mine, and this was the topic du jour in one of our IRC channels this afternoon. The context for the discussion was trying to determine whether he was too drunk to math, or needed another drink.
IMO one of the larges inhibitors of entrepreneurship is a lack of confidence that is instilled by the education system.

No, I think it's that most people can't afford to work for free for months at a time, and very few people are born into the kind of VC connections that make that a positive-expectancy move.

For people who don't have EIR gigs to go back into, startup failure is really unpleasant and can take a long time to recover (career and savings-wise) from.
I assume he was thinking of Dijkstra's algorithm.
Maybe you haven't said such things, and maybe you're interested in improving things in your own misguided way

Well, since you appear to be quite happy putting words under my fingertips, perhaps you'd like to tell me what I think on this subject? I'll give you a free clue to start with: at no point in this discussion have I come anywhere within a hundred miles of defending the likes of Chris Dodd and the xxAA style Big Media lobbying groups, whose attitudes I have opposed consistently up to and including contacting my elected government formally on several occasions. (I'm not in the US, but we have some similarly aggressive copyright advocates here in Europe who are just as dangerous.)

My problem with a lot of the more recent comments in this discussion is that it's suddenly turned from talking about the original article to talking about some strawman at the opposite extreme as if those of us who don't agree with Falkvinge are somehow supporting the status quo. The original article takes an IMHO foolish absolute position of completely revoking copyright without proposing any alternative model to promote creation and distribution of new works. However, the alternative of breaking the social bargain the other way is no more palatable to me, with its effectively unending copyright via the Mickey Mouse Protection Act and similar legislation, ever more absurd penalties for hypothetical and often purely economic damages, and so on.

There is a middle ground, and what I would have hoped would be a common sense viewpoint: legislative policy on this kind of issue should be driven by clear moral and/or economic principles, and it should be made based on empirical evidence wherever possible. As far as I'm concerned, neither of the sides taking extreme views on copyright is even close to having a decent case based on real data so far.

Yep -- and they're great stepping stones on the way to eliminating prior restraint of the free act of creation.

I'm not sure what you're trying to argue there, but it looks like it's somewhere between a slippery slope fallacy and an attempt to undermine the existence of any legal system.
The sad thing is we've already got the technology for clean(er), cheaper reactors now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbyr7jZOllI

But we lack the infrastructure and investment to build them.
What the %$# Happened to Comics? – Comics and Society
HFT is an exploitation technique to extract value from the market. It drives away capital formation and investor participation, and is bad for everybody except the HFT traders themselves. All non-HFT traders are affected negatively.
I fully plan on avoiding this until it goes away. Considering the fact that they'll completely miss both the uneducated reality TV audience (too much nerdiness) and the nerd audience (no need for explanation), I don't plan on that taking too long.
Depending on your use-case, you can often just add the value of the largest negative edge weight (pair of vertices, not a vertex) to all weights and use a simple algorithm like Dijkstra
It looks great, I am just a little confused by it as there doesnt seem to be any real navigational hierarchy. I'll continue playing around because I love the idea of the service
I made one of these a little over a year ago, for fun:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sitechat/affmlbhoe...

We don't store logins, messages, or logs on any DB so it's ostensibly anonymous. You can use a nickname but you can't register.

It launched to a ton of early success. Thousands of simultaneous users for a few months, then it just fizzled and died. Good luck.
None of these people have real-seeming connections either (check out the sfist story on the cast and look at their previous "startups").

Moments later edit

And who are these people with the "EIR" backup plans that you're thinking of? The "EIR's" I've met have all been former successful founders who are simply being effectively pre-funded. That's not some class privilege; it's an additional perk of having won in the past, and it's not one of the bigger perks.
I assume he crossed Dijkstra's algorithm with the Dyson sphere.
Here's Nasdaq's price list: http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=pricelisttrading2
Iterating over a text file
That's basically Muji(rushi Ryouhin)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muji

The name literally means Unmarked Good stuff.
As a (mostly) non-consumer myself using this doesn't really interest me but I can see how the Pinterest crowd would love it as well as the businesses who make the products.

Do you automate some of the product identification or is it only by users?
True. I'm guessing they value their time less than we do. They don't strike me as "real" anything. Just overprivileged wankers playing around.
Google Releases Tablet App Quality Checklist
At the moment - we are just focusing on getting data together from users which has been a fair bit of work. We do some automation in the background - but we're bootstrapped so its all what time we have!

We think being able to ask what something is and getting a response from a community is something thats a bit different in the image space.
Trading has always been about speed. This dates back to the creation of the earliest financial markets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family).
Wondering how much these people value their time is like wondering how much the Jersey Shore cast values the soil quality in New Jersey. It's a reality TV show.
Inflation affects the number that you use to value the worth of a company.

Say you buy one share at $10 of a company with a billion outstanding shares. That company is worth, on the market, $10 billion.

Let's say that next year, the company's share price is still $10. Let's also say that inflation in that period was 4%. The company is still worth $10 billion, but each dollar is worth 4% less. The company's total value has dropped.

Inflation didn't cause the total value to drop. The company's value dropped for other reasons (bad sales, company president went crazy, market jitters, whatever causes these things) and inflation simply moved the numbers a bit in the opposite direction.

In short: inflation doesn't affect your returns, but it affects the numbers you use to measure them.
That's not entirely true. I'm an amateur and I want to invest actively using statistics. But getting tick data (covering years/decades) is costly and dealing with it as well. I could handle it if it were daily (if all trades were limited to 9am auction every day. This would also allow room for much more extensive modeling of other data sources and longer term predictions).
"Lithobraking" is a good one (litho = stone or rocky surface, braking = ... well, stopping suddenly)
"Savings account."
I agree with you but we're talking about two different things.

My point was about teenagers trying to figure out what to do with their life. I came to Silicon Valley from another country with no connections and definitely no means from back home. Obviously part of being an entrepreneur at a young age is being able to deliver enough value to an employer to always land back on your feet.

That's not what's holding somebody who has been told throughout all their life that they'll never accomplish anything back, though.
Poor Big Bird - Humorously sad video PSA
Ah, yes. People raised in non-white cultures, after they end up in a place with relative status and luxury, never take a year off. After all, they're all diligent workers who have no need for such bourgeois goods as self discovery and me time.
"abruptly ended at about 10:30 a.m. Friday" ... am I the only one who sees this as a probable programming bug? Mysterious algorithm? I suspect

if(condition = true){...} // notice the single '='

:-D
1. From what I've heard, all large organizations need to trade with HFT strategies in mind. (Is this wrong?) So if Mary and Joe own index funds or mutual funds, then they are competing with active trading strategies. It is basically a tax.

2. If HFTraders are collectively making money, and presumably they must be, that money must be coming from somewhere. If, for example, the stock market rises 50%, via some sequence of gyrations, then there is only a fixed gain to be divided up. Maybe HFT increases the size of the pie, but that feels like mostly a higher-order effect.

Am I wrong?
Here is a simulated posterior on the number of engines that fail: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/388822/rocketfailuredistr.png

Horizontal axis is how many engines failed, and vertical axis is how many times that number of engines failed in the simulation.

The code that generated this is:

from scipy.stats import *
from pylab import *
failures = [binom(9,p).rvs() for p in beta(1,1,1e5) if binom(9,p).rvs() == 1]
hist(failures, bins=9, range=(0,9))
show()

The way this code works is it first picks a `p` from the prior. This `p` represents the failure probability for a single engine. Then we simulate the number of engines that fail when you have 9 of them, and filter out just the worlds where that number is equal to 1 as in the SpaceX launch. Or equivalently, we annihilate all the worlds that have a different observation than ours -- this is a central tenet in Bayesian statistics in contrast to frequentist statistics: we only base our inferences on the things that happened and not on things that hypothetically could have happened but didn't. In a slogan you could say "our fantasies are irrelevant". Then in the worlds that remain, where the same observation was made as in our world, we simulate the number of engines that fail on a new rocket launch and collect the results in a histogram.

So the posterior probability on the entire rocket failing for uniform prior is around 25%. Uniform prior means that you believe that all single engine failure probabilities are equally likely: you think it's equally likely that engines fail with 10% probability as with 63% probability. Tweak the first two parameters to beta to change your prior belief. If you've seen n engines fail in your life and k engines succeed, then setting the first parameter to n+1 and the second to k+1 is a reasonable choice (so the current setting corresponds to not having seen any rocket launches prior to this one). For example if you've seen 2 engines fail and 99 engines succeed you use `beta(3,100,1e5)`: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/388822/rocketfailuredistr_for_optim... Hardly any probability mass left for entire rocket failure :)
basically they have to earn trust before they can do this
i actually have some half solutions, that many use. one of these is code signing (digital signing or simple "signed off by" from an email that you believe belongs to the owner, even thus the first is stronger)

this means, the person may eventually do bad stuff, after earning your trust. OK. But if that's ever detected, at least you can trace back to him.
That's not a very convincing argument. I'd like to participate in F1 racing, but the research and engineering costs are too high for me as an individual to partake in. If they limited racing to only 4-cylinder non-modded Hondas, it would allow me to compete in their game.
It's common enough for space launches that there was joking on twitter last night about playing a drinking game- take a drink every time someone said "nominal". But most people decided that might be a little too much alcohol even for a drinking game. :-)